“Com’è carino,” laughed Rosa, beaming at him. “Com’è carino, il mio maschiotto!”
Geppe choked himself and in consequence was sick, so when Rosa had carefully wiped his chin, she gave him a drink of Chianti and water, by way of settling his stomach. They all went on eating; Fabio chewed his salad with the sound of a mule munching beans. At the head of the table sat Teresa with her knitting; from time to time she would put down her fork in order to knit off a row.
“Mario is suffering from his joint,” announced Rosa. “It is very swollen and red.”
“He should rub it with soap,” Fabio muttered, with his mouth full. “They say that soap hardens the skin.”
“The chemist gave us iodine and a plaster, but I think that the plaster draws.”
“Soap!” repeated Fabio. “I believe in soap! Myself I have got tender feet.”
“No doubt you are right. I will surely tell Mario—poor fellow, his new shoes pinch. It is difficult to find any shoes to fit him, unless we make slits for the swelling.” Rosa sighed, “He cannot move quickly enough, and that is bad for a waiter; a waiter should always get about quickly, especially when clients are hungry!”
“It is good that they are hungry,” said Teresa, looking up. “We gain money by way of their stomachs.”
“That is so,” laughed Fabio, cutting himself some cheese. “That is how we are able to fill our own stomachs.”
“A boy at Geppe’s school has got pidocchi in his head,” chirped Berta, licking her fingers. “I think that Geppe will get them too, and if he gets pidocchi, perhaps I may catch them—I do not wish to catch them, they tickle.”
“Be not so silly, tesoro,” smiled Rosa. “I am sure that you will not get pidocchi. Mamma will comb your hair every day; that will make it beautifully shiny.”
“Scema!” spluttered Geppe. “I have not got pidocchi, and if I get them I will give them to you. I will rub my head against yours!”
“Then I will scratch you,” said Berta firmly, and proceeded to put the threat into action.
There ensued a deafening shriek from Geppe, and a mild-voiced protest from Rosa.
“The good Saint Berta will not love you if you scratch,” she reminded her elder offspring.
“Give me some Chianti,” said Berta, quite unmoved. “I am thirsty; give me some Chianti!”
Fabio filled her glass with red wine and water, which she drank in a series of gulps.
“It is excellent Chianti,” murmured Fabio thoughtfully, “the best I have tasted in years.”
“The price of pasta has gone up,” remarked Teresa; “I blame the Italian Government for that.”
“If it rises much more we are ruined,” sighed Fabio, who, being replete, could afford to be gloomy.
“Mario’s Padrone is buying French pasta, because of the rise,” Rosa told them disapprovingly; “but I myself do not think that is right. After all, the Padrone is Italian!”
“One must live as one can,” Teresa retorted, “and the English will eat it just the same.”
“That is so,” agreed Rosa. “The English are stupid; my father thinks them very stupid.”
The meal finished, they wiped their mouths on their napkins and Fabio fetched a cigar.
“Even tobacco has risen,” he grumbled, burning his fingers with a match.
“Everything is always rising,” frowned Teresa, “but Fabio and I will rise with it. For those who have got the will to succeed there is nearly always a way. Our business grows, we have not enough room; soon we must hire a new shop.”
“That is your fine business head,” Rosa told her. “I sometimes think that my Mario’s is less fine, but then he is always so patient and kind, and moreover he suffers with his bunion.”
“Nerone should buy him a business of his own,” grunted Fabio. “I will speak with him about it.”
“That I fear he will never do,” sighed Rosa. “However, we are very well off as we are—the children have plenty to eat …”
IV
Gian-Luca escaped upstairs to his room—Olga’s room, in which he now slept. He wondered why Rosa’s children always howled; he could never remember them other than howling. He thought Geppe greedy and Berta a bore; he did not like either of them very much, and yet they had Mario for their father, and Mario loved them—that was so strange, for he, Gian-Luca went unloved. There was Fabio, of course, but Fabio did not count, or at least he counted very little. Fabio felt old when you touched his skin, he had pains in his back, he was timid of Teresa—Teresa who might have counted.
Gian-Luca sat down on the well-worn sofa and began to think over Teresa. With a queer, tight feeling round his heart, he realized that he no longer loved her. She allured him still, and that must be why he had that tight feeling round his heart. When she spoke in her quiet, flat voice, he had to listen; when she wished something done, he had perforce to do it, willing and eager to obey; but he no longer loved her or wished for her love—and that made him feel the more lonely.
He tried to picture Teresa as she had been, or rather, as he had once seen her; to recapture some of the sense of beauty that had shrouded her presence like incense. His head fell back and he closed his eyes, the better to conjure up the vision, but all that he saw now was a gaunt, ageing woman with beetling brows and a high, pinched nose; a woman whose hair showed the scalp at the temples, whose lips were too pale, whose chin sagged a little, and whose teeth were no longer very white. And something in all this was intolerable to him, so that unwilling tears trickled under his closed eyelids—tears for himself, but also for Teresa—because he no longer found her fair.
He could hear the sound of laughter coming
